Newer computer operating systems such as Linux, Windows XP, or Windows Vista provide multiple credential stores for network client applications' usage. These credential stores usually are utilized to provide mechanisms for applications to store credentials for the user, and retrieve them later to provide a single-sign-on (SSO) experience. More famous of these credential stores by name are: Firefox password manager, Gnome Keyring, KDE Wallet, Windows Passport, CASA, SecretStore etc.
Applications, based on their needs or at the time of their development, are closely integrated with a particular credential store. This is due to applications utilizing different credential stores and different types. As a result, there is a need for a single point of administration and access for the user. Currently, however, users must launch different management utilities for each store to manage their credentials. There are presently no tools available to provide the ability to copy, move, or “link” credentials among different versions of the same applications or multiple applications sharing the same credential. To allow credentials to be available for use and management in different stores, currently you have to manually create, copy, or delete them from one store to another. Intuitively, this is inconvenient and impractical.
Also, it presently exists that each credential store has proprietary interests in only offering solutions focused on their store and not interoperability with other stores, thereby avoiding ease of use for end users.
In view of these various problems, there is need in the art of credential stores to provide a mechanism to synchronize the values of credentials between stores, thereby eliminating the need for manually maintaining credentials in multiple stores. In that many computing configurations already have existing SSO technology, it is further desirable to leverage existing configurations by way of retrofit technology, thereby avoiding the costs of providing wholly new products. Taking advantage of existing frameworks, such as the CASA (Common Authentication Service Adapter), software offering by Novell, Inc., the common assignee of this invention, is another feature that optimizes existing resources. Any improvements along such lines should further contemplate good engineering practices, such as automation, relative inexpensiveness, stability, ease of implementation, low complexity, flexibility, etc.